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Master Your Game: Enhancing Your Mental Game

Guest post by: Jacque Small

Article Overview: You have a target, and have been working on consistent focused action. The technical part of your swing is now coming together. You are starting to feel a sense of confidence in what you are doing, but the results are less than expected given your hard work. Results are not just about the physical skill or the technical knowledge. Being able to consistently score depends on your mental game. In this issue, we discuss the four areas of the mental game: • Having a winning attitude • Being centered emotionally • Being positive, and • Playing in the zone.

Master Your Game: Enhancing Your Mental Game

You have a target, and have been working on consistent focused action. The technical part of your swing is now coming together. You are starting to feel a sense of confidence in what you are doing, but the results are less than expected given your hard work.

Results are not just about the physical skill or the technical knowledge. Being able to consistently score depends on your mental game. In this issue, we discuss the four areas of the mental game:

• Having a winning attitude
• Being centered emotionally
• Being positive, and
• Playing in the zone.


Winning Attitude

A winning attitude is believing in yourself and maintaining confidence in the face of adversity. Your attitude is fickle; it can change at a moment’s notice. To build confidence, you must be vigilant about acknowledging yourself.

Greg Norman in the 1996 Masters Golf Tournament provides an example of a winning attitude gone south. Norman was the favorite to win, and at the end of the third day was up by six strokes. Within 24 hours, however, Nick Faldo had chipped away at his lead and won the Masters by five strokes. Norman’s confident stride from the day before shifted into slumped shoulders and a blank expression. Strong and positive one day, in total disarray the next.

To maintain confidence and have that winning attitude, remind yourself every day that you did something well. Every coaching session, I ask my clients what they have done well. It’s important for them to recognize their own strengths.


Emotionally Centered

Your emotions can knock you out of your game faster than anything else. Three emotions can play havoc with your golf game or any other game you choose to play – fear, anger and worry.

Fear is the voice of self-doubt. It causes anxiety before a round of golf, gives you first-tee jitters and may make you “choke” under pressure. It will stop you from taking on new challenges, thereby hampering your game of life just like your golf game. Learning to relax your body will lessen the anxiety.

Anger causes you to lose your rhythm and your ability to focus and think clearly. It also makes others around you uncomfortable. Recognize that anger is predominately rooted in lack of self-esteem. By strengthening how you feel about yourself, control will begin to return

Focusing on what others think of you for fear that you will make a fool of yourself is another barrier that will keep you at the driving range rather than stepping out to play your game. Taking risks and acknowledging your successes is required to build your sense of self-confidence. Working with a coach is a way for you to receive support and immediate feedback while exercising your confidence muscle.


Be Positive

There is a mind/body connection between positive thinking and the strength of our muscles. Positive thoughts generate a feeling of excitement, possibility and hope. Harv Eker states in The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind that our past impacts our thoughts, which impact our emotions, which affect our actions. The key to becoming emotionally centered is to alter your thinking and the language that you use. In Golf’s Mental Hazards, Alan Shapiro’s recommendation, like Eker’s, is to rewire your emotions – use positive thinking to restructure your cognitive processes.

If positive thinking and language establishes a picture of what you would like to have happen, the opposite is also true. In golf if you see a pond of water and you think “don’t hit the ball in the water,” what happens? You will likely hit the ball in the water. Your mind processes in pictures and does not recognize the word “not.” Hitting the ball in the water is merely your body’s best response to accomplish the task you set for it.

The same is true at work. Thinking about what you can’t do and what is wrong with work and with whom you have trouble getting along will only serve to generate negative emotions thereby decreasing your effectiveness. Stress will build up further compromising your game. The antidote: think positively, speak positively and surround yourself with positive people.


Playing in the Zone

When you play in the zone there is no worry or frustration. You have perfect clarity. Time seems to move slowly, yet flies by. Everything comes with an amazing sense of ease. When you are in the zone, you are having a hazard-free round of golf.

What does the zone look like? Here’s an example: one client amazes me with the quantity of work she accomplishes between each coaching session. Emotionally, she is very centered and with coaching has developed a greater sense of clarity, which in turn has heightened her focus. In the past year she has increased her business five fold and is about to publish a new book.

To play in the zone you must successfully manage your attitude, be emotionally centered and surround yourself with positive energy. These are all pre- requisites. When you have that, positive results will naturally follow.

Swinging in the zone,
Jacque Small

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Article Tags: attitude, confidence, mental game, physical skill



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